


Of Drinks I Had and Drinks I Wanted (But Didn't Have)

by ThaliaClio



Series: Demons and Playmates [9]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Psych, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Lassie and Shawn have a Talk, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, People are works in progress, Shawn acts like a grown-up, Tony and Lassie have a Talk, Tony is totally in love, but so is Lassie, mostly - Freeform, then Tony and Lassie have a Talk again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 15:20:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1161252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThaliaClio/pseuds/ThaliaClio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shawn is mostly back to normal. Lassiter is drinking at a bar. Tony is at the bar, but not drinking. Important conversations are had. Alternatively titled "One (Two) Time(s) Lassie and Tony Didn't Get Drunk Together".</p><p>We are all searching for someone whose demons play well with ours. - Unknown</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Drinks I Had and Drinks I Wanted (But Didn't Have)

**Author's Note:**

> Follows the events of Of Comings and Goings. Won't really make much sense unless you read that one. Sorry, kids.

Spencer did the Macarena in the station today. He climbed onto Lassiter’s desk and started humming and dancing and the whole station was staring before he finally spat out his ‘vision’ of Italian noodles covered in cheese and organized line dancing. Lassiter wasn’t even surprised when it led to the arrest of three prominent Mafioso, one of whom apparently taught square-dancing for a daycare. It was not the weirdest arrest he’d made with Spencer’s unique brand of help. 

Lassiter had made a show of rolling his eyes as he slapped on the cuffs, but he couldn’t hide the small smile when Spencer high-fived Guster and spilled his pineapple smoothie down his green polo.

It’s been two weeks and he’s okay (mostly) again.

It’s been two weeks and Lassiter is sitting alone at a bar.

It’s a nice bar; it doesn’t smell like spilled beer and stale cigarettes. Rather, he can smell lemon-scented wood cleaner, and soft jazz floats from the background from a live band. The glasses are clean, and the top shelf whiskey is expensive enough to make him wince. The ice cube is round and large and clinks against the crystal with every sip.

“That’s some cheap shit.”

A sudden voice to his left makes Lassiter jump, and he’s lucky he’s just set his glass down. His hand automatically reaches for his holster, but he’s locked up his gun for the night because he knew he’d be drinking.

Slouched against the lemon-scented bar is none other than Tony Motherfucking Stark, last seen in a group hug with none other than Shawn Motherfucking Spencer. Lassiter goes for his drink again.

“Wasn’t drinking for the taste.”

“All the same.” Stark points at something with two fingers, and the bartender sets down two glasses within seconds.

Stark waits for Lassiter to pick up one of the glasses before raising his own in an apparent toast. Lassiter is cautious in his sipping, but his eyebrows shoot up at the taste. Stark smirks and sets his own glass down untouched as he takes a seat on the stool beside Lassiter. Lassiter raises his glass in thanks and waits for his new companion to speak. This visit is not without purpose.

“So. Shawn,” Stark finally speaks.

Lassiter grunts. Waits.

“You’ve worked together a long time. You’re friends.” Lassiter nods. “You were worried about him.”

Lassiter freezes, glass halfway to his lips. Swallows. “He’s not smart enough to worry about himself.”

Stark’s laugh startles Lassiter. “Yeah. Shawn… He’s not exactly careful. At least, not with himself.”

There’s an old fondness in Stark’s voice. He thinks of warm bodies under warm sheets again. Then he thinks about days of MIT sweatpants and a surly bodyguard.

“What happened to him?”

The faint fondness around Stark’s eyes hardens and Lassiter knows it was bad.

“Most of it… Most of it is classified,” Stark pauses, staring into the glass. He doesn’t drink any. “But it was because of me. My fault.”

Lassiter frowns, feels his hand clench against the glass. He drinks to swallow the words he wants to spit out like acid. If Stark notices, he doesn’t say.

“They were trying to get back at me, to _convince_ me to do something for them. I… was uncooperative.” Stark is rubbing at his chest. Lassiter notices but doesn’t say. Lassiter’s drink is gone. Stark’s is untouched. “They experimented on him. He almost died. I thought he did. But then he saved my life.”

Lassiter is drinking Stark’s glass now, pushed across the table, swallowing too fast to appreciate the taste. “What did they do to him?”

Stark clenches and unclenches his jaw, fingers twitching against the lemon-scented wood. “That’s not my story to tell. You’ll have to ask Shawn.”

Lassiter wants to yell, to throw his glass – and Stark’s – against the wall, to demand that Stark explain because the world still feels off kilter and wrong somehow. Lassiter doesn’t have all of the pieces and this puzzle doesn’t even have edges to fill in. But he doesn’t.

Instead –

“So you and Spencer?”

And now Stark is smiling, all tension gone. Suddenly it’s very hard to believe that this is a man who once sold weapons of mass destruction and went by the moniker the Merchant of Death. He looks in love.

“Yeah. Me and Shawn.”

Lassiter lets go of the glass. His fist unclenches. His frowns softens. “How long?”

Stark sighs. “Years. Over a decade since we met. Saved my life.”

“He’s saved my life. My career, too.” Lassiter doesn’t know why he’s saying this. He barely even admits it to himself. Maybe he’s drunk.

But Stark’s still smiling, nodding now. “He does that.”

“But what did you do for him?” Lassiter doesn’t mean it cruelly, as bad as his words sound. Spencer is a force of nature. A hurricane in a bottle, a tornado in a cup, a tsunami in a bowl. He blows throw life and people and places, changing everyone and everything and coming out unscathed. But Stark is apparently a permanent. He’s Spencer’s buoy, homing beacon, landing strip, bringing Shawn in safely from a storm of his own creation. And Lassiter doesn’t understand.

“Fuck if I know. But I’m glad I did it.”

Lassiter huffs out a laugh. “You know, I don’t understand Spencer. Shawn.”

Stark smiles. “Sure you do. Think about it.”

“No, I really don’t. Shawn is the kind of guy who will go running into a hostage situation to save his best friend but constantly endangers that same friend. He’s the kind of guy to save my career one day but consistently ruins my reputation with his antics. He’s the kind of guy who is apparently in a committed relationship but flirts with everything that moves. He’s the kind of guy who draws all the wrong kind of attention with childish antics but hides whatever intelligence he does have. I really, really do not understand Shawn Spencer."

Stark’s smile widens. “You really, really do. Gus is only ever as in danger as Shawn lets him be, and he has never, never been seriously hurt on Shawn’s watch. He gets some excitement and a good story, but no bodily harm. Your reputation is better than ever. You’re not the scary cop sitting alone at his desk anymore. Other cops invite you to drinks, parties. As for the flirting, well. That’s a character flaw Shawn and I share.”

Lassiter opens his mouth to respond, but closes it and shrugs. “So he’s, what, a martyr?”

Stark barks out a sound too harsh to be a laugh. “Jesus Christ, no. But he is a good guy who loves his friends. And you’re a friend.”

Lassiter takes a long swallow and then stares at his (Stark’s) empty glass. “Yeah.”

There’s another glass in front of him, this time bigger with froth on top. He turns to look at Stark.

“Any more whiskey and you won’t remember this conversation in the morning.”

“ ‘m not that drunk,” Lassiter mumbles. But he takes the beer anyway.

“Talk to Shawn tomorrow. After the hangover wears off.”

__

So here he is standing on the front porch of the ‘Psych’ building, afternoon soon warm on his face and doubts on his mind. He turns to leave, shaking his head when the door is yanked open.

Standing in the open doorway is Shawn Spencer, grinning like the loon that Lassiter frequently believes him to be.

“Fucking psychic,” he growls, trying to mask his automatic jump.

The fucking psychic just smiles harder. He looks good, Lassiter notes. His hair is styled to be messy instead of actually being messy, and he’ wearing jeans instead of sweats. The bags under his eyes are faded.

“Lassie!” And he’s cheerful as fuck. “Come on in. You are my most favorite detective in the whole wide world, after all.”

Lassiter eyes the sidewalk for a moment, but shakes his head and goes in.

“The spirits are telling me you and Tony had a talk last night.”

“Or you saw your boyfriend – who’s in town exclusively to see you.”

“Or that. But you never know.” And Spencer fucking winks.

Lassiter is too used to Spencer’s shit to even react, but he does recall Stark and Spencer’s shared character flaw, and it makes him smile. Which seems to throw Spencer off.

“So. About that talk Stark and I had.”

“Trying to steal my boyfriend?”

Lassiter scoffs on reflex, thinks of his own warm body and warm sheets, two months from release. “Not exactly.”

Spencer flings himself onto the old couch against the wall. Lassiter, with much more dignity, sits in the office chair he assumes to be Guster’s, being that it’s at the desk without ten rubber duckies.

“Talk to me, Lass. Share the thoughts going on beneath that thick Irish hairline.”

“It’s…” And suddenly he has no idea what he’s doing. How do you ask somebody politely about that time they were kidnapped and tortured for a week?

Spencer straightens up on the couch but doesn’t lose his relaxed demeanor. “You know, I asked Tony to talk to you.”

“What?”

Spencer shrugs, his posture carefully relaxed. Lassiter can still see the tension in his arms.

“I knew you had questions that you wouldn’t ask unless you had permission to ask them.”

Lassiter opens his mouth to reflexively deny needing _permission_ for anything, but Spencer’s right. This already feels like an intrusion, and invasion, even with the explicit invitation of the man who seems to know Spencer better than anyone as well as from Spencer himself. Coming here to ask under other circumstances would have been… impossible.

“Why bother answering at all?” he says instead.

Spencer sinks into the couch just a little bit, relaxation less choreographed. “Because you deserve answers. After all these years and all my shit, you deserve answers.”

Sometimes Lassiter forgets that Spencer is not in fact a child and has most likely, given his travel record and childhood and choice in significant others, seen and done more than he ever could imagine. He is forcibly reminded in this moment.

“Yeah.” His voice is shaky and he clears it. “So about those answers.”

Spencer smiles just a little bit too sharply. “You haven’t asked the question.”

“What happened to you when you went missing?”

__

Lassiter finds himself at the same bar again that evening. He’s not surprised to see Stark again.

“Whiskey. Neat. Two, please. And a water.”

“Do you even drink anymore?” Lassiter swallows his drink just as the glasses are set down.

“These are both for you. You seem like you need it.”

“Encouraging my alcoholism?”

The wry statement drags a tired smile of out Stark. There’s more stubble than is fashionable on his face, now. Maybe a week away from being truly a beard. Lassiter wonders why he didn’t notice the day before. Attributes it the Stark arriving on his first drink tonight rather than his sixth as he had before.

“Maybe a little. If you want help with that, you’ll want to talk to your lady friend. Shawn pulled me out of the bottle.” Stark pauses, sips at his water. “Besides, you’re not an alcoholic yet. But after the conversation you just had, you’ll want a few drinks.”

“Did you?” Lassiter suddenly says, forgoing all tact. “Need a few drinks? After the Mandarin?”

Stark is (unsurprisingly) unsurprised by Lassiter’s knowledge of classified information. “Yes. But Shawn needed me more. And he will always _always_ be more important than a few drinks.”

Lassiter breathes into his glass. Thinks about Marlowe and orange jumpsuits and _just two more months, baby_. Sets down the glass. “Yeah. Yeah, I get that.”

Stark smiles at him, just a little sad, but maybe a little proud, too. Points at his water and nods at the bartender. Lassiter can’t even pretend to be surprised by the instant service. This is Tony Motherfucking Stark, after all. He hides his smile behind the glass as he sips the water.

“Shawn’s okay, Detective. Maybe not good, but better than he was.”

“You love him.” Lassiter is surprised by his own candor and glances down at the one finished glass of whiskey, half expecting the other two to be empty as well.

“Yeah.” Stark’s smile spreads across his face like the sunrise. “I love him.”

Lassiter thinks of warm beds and warm sheets and _just two more months, baby_ and he really, really does understand.


End file.
